Hand
as Natural Man-Machine Interface in Smart Environments

Keywords

Abstract

In near future the computers, the vision/ sense /speech
sensors, intelligent adaptive wireless networks, etc. would
disappear into the environment creating smart spaces with
embedded information around us. But human is the prime
user of that embedded information. As a part of human
interaction with embedded machines, we need human like
natural interfaces. In this paper, we propose a proto-type
system for a meeting room using an active stereo-vision to
create an interactive digital space (embedded smart space)
and use hand as a (i) laser pointer, (ii) as virtual pen
enabling us to write on the screen remotely, and (iii) as
virtual mouse to drag and drop or highlight a particular part
on the screen, and (iv) an auxiliary mode to erase what we
have written on the screen. Besides robust tracking of hand
in 3D space, we need reliable algorithm to robustly
recognize different modes/gestures of hand to perform
different functions. The focus in this paper is to develop a
robust algorithm based on fuzzy neural network (FNN) that
could distinguish hand as three different modes of operation.
Our experiments have successfully demonstrated the above
three modes in real time using an active stereo vision
system.